Tuesday, July 8, 2014

Mastering the Crucifix is Officially for Sale

I love books. I love reading them. I love writing them. I love taking them apart and figuring out how they work. And I love to experiment with their potential to engage readers in new and interesting ways.

Mastering the Crucifix is the follow up to Artechoke Media's 3-D Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, an instructional that we released for free to demonstrate our vision for what jiu-jitsu books could and should be. This instructional formed the basis of a highly successful Indiegogo campaign which raised the money we needed to shoot Mastering the Crucifix, the first book from the acclaimed blogger behind Aesopian.com.

Obviously, I want you to buy the book. I'm proud of the work we've done, and I'm proud of the instructional model that we developed and continue to refine with each project. Making money from the project would be nice, but that's not what interests me most. I am most interested in being able to engage more leaders in the jiu-jitsu community and give them a vehicle for sharing their knowledge, their stories, and their expertise.

I want Artechoke Media to be the platform that gives the unsung heroes in our community a platform so that the community as a whole can appreciate and learn from their experiences.

Would we make more money if we did limited run, $250 DVD sets with the hottest competitors on the scene? Would we make even more money if we offered a 50% affiliate marketing rate to every jiu-jitsu blogger we could find? What if we followed that up with a bunch of squeeze pages full of bolded and highlighted text that made outrageous promises like that you could get your black belt in 3 years or that you could win worlds thanks to this one super expensive product? Could we make an extra batch of money six months later when we magically find a batch of DVDs that we "forgot" in the company basement?

Yes, yes, yes, and yes. For some reason, that style of marketing seems to work really well in the martial arts community, but I think the jiu-jitsu community deserves better.

So we are releasing fairly priced products that are DRM (digital rights management) free. They are loaded with high quality content that far exceed the depth and interactivity of other instructional products on the market, and they feature top-notch instructors that have been giving freely to the community for many years. Matt Kirtley has run Aesopian for more than a decade, giving away content for free that has helped countless jiu-jiteiros learn the art. Our next author, Jeff Rockwell, is known in jiu-jitsu communities like MGInAction and Grappler's Guide for sharing insightful videos and helping people troubleshoot technique.

These are the kinds of people I want Artechoke to support, and I hope that the rest of the jiu-jitsu community agrees that its worthwhile.